contributions

Contact: Doug Gavel (617) 495-1115 • News Office
Office of Communications and Public Affairs FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 12, 2007
A Vote of No Confidence in America’s Leaders, According to the 2007 National Leadership Index Growing concern about an across-the-board ‘leadership crisis’
A new survey reveals a profound and growing unhappiness among Americans with their current leaders, not only in politics but in nearly every sphere. More than three quarters of the public (77%) (…)

Sherwood Ross November 19, 2007
By firing radioactive ammunition, the U.S., U.K., and Israel may have triggered a nuclear holocaust in the Middle East that, over time, will prove deadlier than the U.S. atomic bombing of Japan.
So much ammunition containing depleted uranium(DU) has been fired, asserts nuclear authority Leuren Moret, "The genetic future of the Iraqi people for the most part, is destroyed."
"More than ten times the amount of radiation released during atmospheric testing (…)

Three countries that have been allied with the United States are rapidly trying to distance themselves from what appears to be a sinking ship.
First “Turkey on Tuesday signed an agreement with neighboring Iran for joint power production projects despite U.S. pressure against investment in the Islamic Republic.
“Turkish Energy Minister Hilmi Guler played down U.S. discontent with flourishing energy cooperation between its NATO ally Turkey and Iran, saying more agreements would be (…)

LONDON, Nov 23 (Reuters) - The U.S. military has stepped up chartering of tankers and requests for extra fuel in the U.S. Central Command area, which includes the Gulf, shipping and oil industry sources say.
23 Nov 2007 11:07:33 GMT Source: Reuters
By Stefano Ambrogi
A Gulf oil industry source said the charters suggested there would be high naval activity, possibly including a demonstration to Iran that the U.S. Navy will protect the Strait of Hormuz oil shipping route during tensions (…)

Australia’s Labour party claimed victory in national elections on Saturday, signalling an end to 11 years of conservative government led by Prime Minister John Howard.
Mail and Guardian James Grubel | Sydney, Australia 24 November 2007 12:05
"On the numbers we are seeing tonight, Labour is going to form a government," Labour’s deputy leader, Julia Gillard, told Australian television.
Australian Broadcasting Corporation television predicted on early counting that Labour, led by Kevin (…)

By Ian McDougall in New Delhi
Child workers, some as young as 10, have been found working in a textile factory in conditions close to slavery to produce clothes that appear destined for Gap Kids, one of the most successful arms of the high street giant.
Speaking to The Observer, the children described long hours of unwaged work, as well as threats and beatings.
Gap said it was unaware that clothing intended for the Christmas market had been improperly subcontracted to a sweatshop using (…)

THE crimes against Palestinians in the occupied territories and elsewhere, particularly since the Palestinians voted "the wrong way" in the Hamas victory last year, are so shocking that the only emotionally valid reaction is rage and a call for extreme actions. But that does not help the victims, and is likely to harm them.
Our actions have to be adapted to real-world circumstances, difficult as it may be to stay calm in the face of shameful crimes, in which we in the United States are (…)

y Laila Lalami, The Nation
A kind of aggression." "A successor to the Berlin Wall." "A lever in the long power struggle between democratic values and fundamentalism." "An insult to education." "A terrorist operation."
These descriptions — by former French President Jacques Chirac; economist Jacques Attali; and philosophers Bernard-Henri Lévy, Alain Finkielkraut and André Glucksmann — do not refer to the next great menace to human civilization but rather to the Muslim woman’s headscarf, (…)

The database, totalling more than 30 million pages and known as the Traditional Knowledge Data Library, has come about for one very simple reason: to prevent Western pharmaceutical giants and others using this traditional Indian information to create a product for which they then obtain a patent.
By Andrew Buncombe Published: 23 November 2007
They range from the everyday to the decidedly obscure, from items with a specific, specialised use to those with a host of applications. Their (…)

"The Price of Sugar" (thepriceofsugar.com) follows a charismatic Spanish priest, Father Christopher Hartley, as he organizes some of this hemisphere’s poorest people, challenging powerful interests profiting from their work. When he arrives in the Dominican Republic, he’s warned against entering the sugar plantations where most of his parishioners live. Breaking a centuries old taboo, he discovers shocking examples of modern-day slavery intrinsic to the global sugar trade.
On an island (…)